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In the blink of an eye and the twist in a road 11 years ago, the lives of two young sisters changed for ever.

Shannon and Erica Deering were teenagers looking ahead to full and active lives.

Shannon, now 29, had won a scholarship to play softball in Florida. Erica, now 26, was still in high school but had hopes of becoming a lawyer.

All that changed in a horrific crash when both sisters suffered dreadful spinal injuries that left them quadriplegic.

Shannon was driving along a rural road between Oshawa and Port Perry when she was forced off the road.

At a news conference Wednesday, mom Deborah recalled the horror she faced when she had to bring her disabled daughters back to a home that had to be retrofitted to accommodate their wheelchairs.

Aside from major renovations to their home, they had to pay for nursing, physiotherapy and 24-hour attendant care.

“The costs are astronomical,” she recalled.

Just one thing stood between them and financial ruin.

“We said, ‘Thank God we had insurance.’”

Shannon and Erica were at Queen’s Park with other accident victims and the Personal Injury Alliance to protest changes to insurance rules introduced in last month’s budget.

The government proposes to slash the maximum amount a person can claim for a catastrophic injury from $2 million to $1 million.

And $2 million may sound like a lot of money, but when you’re paying for round-the-clock care, it gets eaten up quickly.

“We’ve already spent almost half of the $2 million we got from insurance,” Shannon said.

The Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty came to power in 2003 on a pledge to reduce the cost of car insurance premiums.

While premiums may have gone down, so have benefits — unless drivers buy additional insurance.

While no one argues the need to hold the line on payouts for minor bumps, sprains and strains, this change is devastating for people who’ve been consigned to a wheelchair for life.

It’s not just drivers who must worry.

Pedestrians and cyclists who don’t carry their own car insurance will suffer if they’re in an accident and the driver who hit them doesn’t have the extra coverage.

“There’s a whole group of people who won’t have the option to buy the optional benefits about which the Liberal government is speaking,” lawyer Sloan Mandel told reporters.

“Almost nobody buys them.”

Cyclist Rohan Pais was training for a charity bike ride in 2010 when he was hit by a car travelling 70-80 km/h. He received serious internal, neurological and spinal injuries. His wife told the news conference he’s been in an institution for four and a half years — and it’s already cost $1 million.

Peter Athanasopoulos, of Spinal Cord Injury of Ontario, said the changes will “rob those who need the greatest support at the most difficult time of their lives.”

Finance Minister Charles Sousa said Wednesday this province is the only one to have “catastrophic” insurance — a claim the lawyers for the Personal Injury Alliance dismiss, since other provinces don’t have the same complicated insurance system we have.

“The catastrophic coverage that exists is going to continue. The degree of benefit that had been available is going to be $1 million, which more than covers the cases before the courts,” Sousa said.

He kept talking about “churning” in the system, which I suspect is bafflegab for fraud.

Look, we all want to keep our insurance rates low. No one wants fraud artists ripping us off for dodgy claims.

But is it right to pad the profits of the insurance industry on the backs of people such as the Deering sisters and Rohan Pais?

If this cut in catastrophic benefits goes through it will mean their care will be paid by taxpayers — not the insurance companies.